EU
Express
THE EUROPEAN UNION faces the risk a full-blown energy crisis as nations look to phase out fossil fuels to meet the bloc’s green energy agenda, an expert has told Express.co.uk.
As part of its long-term strategy against climate change, the European Union has committed to becoming climate-neutral by 2050. The ambitious target includes heavily investing in renewable sources of energy, like wind and solar, and the gradual phasing out of fossil fuels – the leading source of greenhouse emissions. According to the European Commission, the transition to net-zero is an “urgent challenge” but one that will “build a better future of all”.
Some experts, however, fear the push for green is too ambitious and could plunge the continent into the depths of an energy crisis.
According to Craig Golinowski, managing partner at Carbon Infrastructure Partners (CIP), countries that have vowed to eliminate fossils fuels are at least 50 years out from achieving this goal.
He told Express.co.uk: “Human beings have not hit peak demand for coal. Oil and natural gas demand will grow for decades.
Express
THE GERMAN defence minister has urged the EU to build a military “reaction force”, in response to the disastrous American pull-out from Afghanistan.
Following the Taliban victory last month, a number of senior European politicians have suggested the EU needs its own army, including some who were previously sceptical. France is currently furious about AUKUK, a new military alliance between America, Britain and Australia.
Its formation led Australia to cancel a lucrative submarine contract with a French company.
In response, Paris withdrew its ambassadors from the US and Australia, with the country’s foreign minister claiming she’d been “stabbed in the back”.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the German defence minister, said the Afghan debacle demonstrates the need for a European “rapid reaction force”.
Speaking to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung she said: “The question is, what conclusions do I draw from this.
Fisheries
Express
FRENCH fishermen have staged a protest amid anger at post-Brexit fishing rights and access to Jersey’s waters.
On Saturday, more than 100 people from France’s fishing industry gathered on Armanville beach in Normandy to protest the Brexit-initiated feud. The French beach is where a power cable supplying Jersey with its electrical needs makes land.
The protest comes amid frustration at plans to restrict the number of French fishing vessels which will have access to Jersey’s waters.
The plans will also limit how many days the vessels can fish and what equipment they are allowed to use.
Under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between Britain and the EU, access to Jersey’s waters will be restricted from October 1 after it was extended by three months in July.
Protesters were joined by local politicians from across Normandy who expressed their support for the industry.
AUKUS
Telegraph
The new Foreign Secretary has waded into a major diplomatic row over Britain’s new security pact with the US and Australia, insisting that “freedoms need to be defended”.
Writing in The Telegraph, Liz Truss states that the Aukus agreement “shows our readiness to be hard-headed in defending our interests and challenging unfair practices and malign acts”, in a thinly veiled reference to China’s growing military prowess and aggressive approach to trade.
The intervention, Ms Truss’s first as Foreign Secretary, came amidst a fierce EU backlash against the trilateral partnership, which France described as “unacceptable behaviour between allies and partners”, as Emmanuel Macron withdrew the country’s ambassadors from Washington DC and Canberra.
Andreas Michaelis, Germany’s ambassador to the UK, suggested that the new Aukus partnership threatened the “coherence and unity of the West”.
The French government is furious at Australia’s cancellation of a £72.8 billion deal to buy diesel-electric submarines, in favour of nuclear-powered technology provided by Britain and the US.
On Saturday, Clement Beaune, France’s Europe minister, described Britain as a “junior partner” in the arrangement, claiming that the UK had participated in the partnership “opportunistically” as a way to prove its place in the world post-Brexit.
Similar stories can be read in the Guardian, Evening Standard, BBC News
Gas
Sun
MAJOR food producers warned last night of meat running out in two weeks — as Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was locked in crisis talks with energy bosses.
High-level discussions took place in Whitehall as soaring gas prices threatened a huge knock-on effect for the production and supply of food.
One of the country’s biggest meat firms said Christmas dinners could be off. And Ocado said it was unable to deliver frozen goods due to a shortage of dry ice produced by carbon dioxide (CO2).
A shutdown of two fertiliser plants in the north of England — which produces CO2 as a by-product — has triggered big issues in meat supply and other foods. The factories were forced to close due to the high gas prices after providing 60 per cent of domestic production of commercial CO2.
The gas is used to stun animals before slaughter and in the packaging of foods to increase shelf life.
British Meat Processors Association boss Nick Allen warned businesses in the industry can carry on for less than two weeks before CO2 stocks run out and no meat will be available. He said: “Everyone is outraged these fertiliser plants can shut down without warning and take something so essential to the supply chain off-stream just like that.”
The country’s biggest poultry supplier even claimed last night that Christmas dinners could be “cancelled” due to the shortage.
Several media also cover the story including Mail, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Times, Evening Standard, ITV News, GB News.
NHS
Telegraph
Up to 70 serving police officers have been drafted in to drive ambulances in London amid the growing crisis in the health service, The Telegraph can reveal.
The officers first volunteered to temporarily help out the London Ambulance Service in January as the surge in coronavirus hospital admissions put unprecedented pressure on paramedics.
As the strain on the NHS eased in the spring, the officers were able to return to their crimefighting duties at Scotland Yard.
However, a huge increase in demand in the NHS in recent weeks has led to the officers once again being called back behind the wheel.
Despite the number of Covid-19 hospitalisations falling, the past three months have been among the top five busiest on record for 999 calls taken.
Demand began to rise in June as restrictions were lifted and people began to go out and about more, leading to an increase in emergency incidents.
Climate change
Mail
Boris Johnson will fly to America today to warn US President Joe Biden that time is running out to reach agreement on new green policies before an historic global summit on climate change in Glasgow in November.
The Prime Minister will host a meeting on climate change at the United Nations tomorrow and address the UN General Assembly before making his first visit to the White House since President Biden took office for discussions on tackling Covid, the new US-UK-Australia submarine alliance and the security situation in Afghanistan.
Mr Johnson’s manoeuvres come less than six weeks before the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, which he hopes will cement his status as a global leader by securing agreement on limiting global warming to 1.5C by ending coal power, shifting to electric vehicles and halting deforestation.
A total of 100 world leaders are now confirmed to attend the UN summit in November,
The sense of urgency increased further last month when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the Earth’s average global temperature will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than projected three years ago.
It has coincided with a series of extreme weather events around the world in recent years, including hurricanes, heatwaves and destructively torrential rain.
Government sources said that the Prime Minister hoped to ‘galvanise’ the international community ahead of the summit and set out ‘concrete steps’ to ‘support developing countries to mitigate the impact of climate change and adapt to its consequences’.
More details are in the Express, Independent.
Cancer
Independent
A new breast cancer drug reduces the risk of death or disease progression by 72 per cent compared to an existing treatment, AstraZeneca has announced.
The British pharmaceutical firm said the results of its trial of Enhertu were “groundbreaking” and showed “a strong trend towards improved overall survival.”
However AstraZeneca warned that the analysis is “not yet mature and is not statistically significant”.
The phase 3 trial, which compared Enhertu’s performance against trastuzumab emtansine as a treatment for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, involved around 500 patients at multiple sites in Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America.
AstraZeneca said nearly all patients treated with Enhertu were alive after 12 months (94.1 per cent) compared to 85.9 per cent of patients treated with trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1).
Susan Galbraith, executive vice president of Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca, said: “Today’s results are ground-breaking.
“These unprecedented data represent a potential paradigm shift in the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, and illustrate the potential for Enhertu to transform more patient lives in earlier treatment settings.”
Javier Cortes, from the International Breast Cancer Centre in Barcelona, said patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer will typically experience disease progression in less than a year with available HER2-directed treatments.
He said the the “high and consistent benefit” seen across efficacy endpoints and key subgroups of patients receiving Enhertu is “remarkable and supports the potential of Enhertu to become the new standard of care for those who have previously been treated for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer”.
The Times and GB News also cover the story.
Times
Men with prostate cancer could be cured within a week as opposed to a month, thanks to rapid advances in radiotherapy.
This week, doctors at the London Royal Marsden hospital will treat the first patient in a trial looking at whether radiotherapy is safe to give in two large doses, rather than the conventional pattern of lots of small doses.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in British men, with about 48,500 diagnosed with the disease each year. Treatments include surgery, hormone therapy and radiotherapy. A third of men have radiotherapy and, as long as it is given at an early stage of the disease, it cures about eight in ten of them.
China
Express
CHINA is “edging closer” to war with the US over Taiwan, according to the former deputy director of MI6, who warned that Beijing is concluding that “peaceful efforts are no longer possible”.
China is close to concluding that its attempts to take over Taiwan will only work “through military efforts”. The ex-deputy director of MI6 Nigel Inkster told LBC this morning that the likelihood of military confrontation between China and the US was “as high as eight, on a scale of one to ten”. On Friday, Taiwan’s air force scrambled to warn away 10 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone.
The day before, Taiwan had announced an unprecedented $9bn boost to military spending to counter the threat from China.
There is also concern that the newly signed Aukus defence pact between the UK, US and Australia could lead to Britain being dragged into a war with China over Taiwan.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian branded the AUKUS pact an example of an “obsolete cold war zero-sum mentality”.
LBC host Matt Frei asked Mr Inkster: “On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that we’ll get a military confrontation between America and China over this issue?”
The story is also in the Mail, Times,
There’s a laugh! The Frogs pretending to be our friends and allies!
Business,:– All businesses want to grow. Its a human thing.The easy way to grow is to buy a competitor. The Government, in cahoots with Accountancy proffession, and gleefull assistance from the legal profession, ensure that all companies are undervalued, and can be transplanted in return for the usual 5 %., So, for apittance they have doubled theirmarket. simple sum. Repeat with another but keep it secret. So Motor cars are still virtual the same as 1900 . Use designers to put a new body . So Profits from no competition from innovators. Put your glasses on and take a look at Dyson and his fights .
Evdence for all this sort of shenanigens, is there in your face From transfer of MOD transferred contracts and research, to Cadburys and the slimy contracts agreed with a Krafta smirk.,and the usual 5 % corruption charge.
Have a rethink about unsuitable cladding and find the 5 %. Look at every item on a government and it ‘ll show the Usual 3 to 5 %s at every stage from political idea to Bin Men.
It’s what made Britain What it is. Europe has infected us. This was very difficult for perpetrators until Ted Heath and his cronies.got their legs under the agreed tables. It is the reason that we have adopted crazy American ideas from crazy bureaucracies of Justice to consumerism and other nonsenses.
The monopolies and other legislationis an international joke, as is much of our country.
Quite simply there are too mant contentious issues each with no opposition personality to be supported or believed. Ukip and its drivelling twits,refuses to provide a nucleus to focus any debate. There are almost certainly government committees advising on these .issues. But ALL will be being sacrificed on some political truism rather than logic or even facts.
How corrupted the news is. CO2 is just so connected with everything, how useful. The EU allowed biofuel power stations to run on a neutral carbon emission basis when they clearly are not. Therefore anything they say about future plans can be bent around the nearest lamppost. Not that the production of CO2 is an issue as there is no proof that man’s CO2 production is making any noticeable impact on global climate. What is the issue is that prime forests are being cleared to fuel the biomass power stations. Then Johnson talks of halting deforestation. Does this mean that Drax Biomass power station will close down in the same way as the two fertiliser factories which produced CO2 as a biproduct? No more ‘Sparkling Water’ then! Perhaps Drax should close but not because of the ridiculous fantasy of zero carbon or in reducing the few percentage additions to atmospheric CO2 from humans but because of the ecological disaster of stripping out forests.
In a discussion recently we had been made aware of staff leaving in droves in my counties No Health Service ration. This has resulted in a further reduction of bed capacity and services. The discussion was about the imminent collapse of the NHS something we had anticipated for some time. Now it seems to be coming to a head. No doubt it will be the fault of all those ignorant and selfish b*****ds who refuse to have an unproven brew injected into their blood stream.
EU:
Surely any problem for the EU is to be welcomed if it leads to its demise; the only sure way to prevent some future government of Remoaners taking us back in. We have enough problems with Boris’ submission to the globalists…
Climate Change:
How many more reasons do we need to rid ourselves of Boris? Hopefully the coming cold period predicted by some will open more eyes to the scam.
Cancer:
Who would trust any product produced by AstraZeneca after the issues with their “vaccine”?
I suspect there are simply too many current issues for most people to take in so they take refuge in any available distraction. We need them to waken up.
Jack Thomas. Cancer. I’ve never understood why people mess about with drugs or radiotherapy when the organ affected could be surgically removed and not missed. Presumably it depends on early discovery and surgery, before it has affected nearby tissue.
Some organs we can not live without of course.
As for that those statistics by the drug firm, they are obviously lies like most statistics.
E.U. Well it can’t die too soon for me but I suspect the Civil Servants and other ‘bodies’ having a remoaner mindset more than politicians at the moment.
Too many issues? Many are squirrels to distract us. I see 2 important issues. 1) Powering our homes and industries. Remedy = nuclear power. 2) Immigration – Stop it by whatever force is necessary.
Oh, perhaps 3 issues. There’s the forced jabbing and ‘passports’ issue as well. In fact our loss of personal liberty.